In various radio technologies, carrier aggregation is being considered in order to support wider transmission bandwidth for increased potential peak data rate to meet the radio technology requirements. In carrier aggregation, multiple component carriers are aggregated and they can be allocated in a subframe to a user equipment (UE). Thus, for example, each component carrier may have a bandwidth of, for example, 20 MHz and a total aggregated system bandwidth of, for example, up to 100 MHz with five component carriers. The UE may receive or transmit on multiple component carriers depending on its capabilities. Further, carrier aggregation may occur with carriers located in the same band and/or carriers located in different bands. For example, one carrier may be located at 2 GHz band and a second aggregated carrier may be located at 800 MHz band.
One radio technology in which carrier aggregation is contemplated is the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) architecture. However, this is not meant to be limiting to the present disclosure and other radio technologies, including HSDPA for CDMA networks may utilize similar methods and apparatus.
In order to support multiple carrier transmission in the uplink, a UE may require different transmitter architectures. One of the transmitter architecture issues is whether multiple carriers use one power amplifier or not. In some instances, a power amplifier may be shared between multiple carriers. In other instances, a power amplifier may be required for each carrier. This could, however, affect scheduling and uplink transmission.